In October 2024, ChatGPT launched Search, its enhanced web search feature, with the goal of offering relevant and up-to-date information to its users. Just over two years later, ChatGPT has become part of people’s daily routines, in some cases even displacing conventional search engines. Its evolution has been such that the tool now has 1.2 billion weekly active users, and its web search volume is roughly equivalent to 20% of Google’s search volume.
Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s head of consumer products, shared this during an interview with Big Technology. According to Fry, user habits have evolved significantly: people no longer turn to AI solely for writing or coding, but also to look up information on current events, finance, health, people, or places.
The wide range of uses ChatGPT offers makes it necessary to clarify what the company considers a “search” to be. Fry explained that “it is anything a user would traditionally have gone to a traditional search engine for, but now chooses to look up in ChatGPT.” In other words, when OpenAI reports that searches in ChatGPT account for one-fifth of Google’s search volume, it is only counting those queries made by users that prompt ChatGPT to search the web.
Fry stated that ChatGPT is growing at a rapid pace. In fact, he noted that just two months ago, the number of weekly active users stood at 1 billion, meaning its growth “amounts to about 100 million users in 30 days, and another 100 million in the next 30 days.”
As for how users are engaging with the tool, Fry revealed that voice mode now totals 250 million weekly active users. Meanwhile, users are turning to ChatGPT’s generative capabilities to create 1.5 billion images per week. It is a dizzying figure just to read, and one that also invites reflection on the resource consumption caused by such massive use of this technology.
Photo: Depositphotos
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